Flashback

May 18, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.9 Comments

Occasionally I attempt to clean out my emailbox, which is a vain and futile attempt to generally keep my life organized. But in this round, I found several stacks of emails regarding Quilt Swaps, a thing we did in the quilt world for a while. Some of my quilty swaps:

And here’s one I received:

I had drafted this pattern for her in my then-used QuiltPro software, because — as she wrote to me — she could see what she wanted to do in her mind, but couldn’t get there. I sent it off to her, and she swapped this back to me. If you need a town square quilt, I have a version of this for sale on my PayHip shop, but it’s more colorful as I used a different source for inspiration.

I started to notice a trend in looking at all these quilts from Days Gone By: strong, bright colors with faded backgrounds, what we often called “low-volume” backgrounds. And lots of solids, or fabrics that read as solids. Maybe that’s why the little quilt at the top of the post felt so familiar to me when I was making it?

And in that mess of emails, I found a link to a post from Never Just Jennifer, detailing a “Round Trip” quilt swap that she was participating in (which is where I found links to these photos; I hope she never takes the post down). Be still my heart! Leaves! New York Beauties! Letters! Flying Geese! Low-volume backgrounds! It checked every box. But wait, here’s the quilt, a tribute to New Hampshire, at the next round, with Trees!

Yes, this was in the day before Design Walls and all that, when we just flat out quilted for fun, exploring new ideas, laying our quilts out on the floor before packaging them all up and sending them off with a book to chronicle our progress. I love that last row for the quilt with Foundation Paper Piecing!

We didn’t seem to worry about coordinated fabric lines, influencing, posting-with-polish-hoping-for-likes. We borrowed. We imitated. We sewed.

In that vein, after the final workman left the kitchen and I was waiting for kitchen-drawer organizers to arrive, I pulled out a stack of cream and black prints, and inspired by this photo from my friend Lisa from easily a decade ago, I got to work.

I remembered the tip from Yvonne, about placing your ruler perpendicular to the seam when making hourglass blocks. And yes, if you want a pattern, it’s drafted with two different versions, and I’m testing and it’s coming soon. But I did want to sew again with that delicious feeling of just making. Of just sewing.

You know what I mean.

Rolling Rainbow Star, and all the minis

Rainbow Gardens

Something to Think About

Flame-out? or Creative Spark?

January 28, 2023August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.10 Comments

If you are anything like me, there are multiple ideas in your head, lurking in the fabric you’ve purchased, or photos on your phone of projects to make. And if you are really really like me, there are some old magazines piling up — perhaps dragged home from your Guild, or pages ripped out, or maybe even a filer drawer somewhere with the label “Future Projects.” You like to browse your favorite on-line shop web-pages, you happily accept emails from your favorite designers and your Saved to Quilts tab on Instagram is ever-expanding. All of this doesn’t even begin to address the folders on Pinterest, or the patterns you’ve acquired, or the drawers stuffed with new tools, new rulers, or quilting notions.

The term flame-out has multiple meanings, but the one I’m referring to is “lose power through the extinction of the flame in the combustion chamber.” My sewing room is my combustion chamber, so to speak. I bring lots of fuel there (see first paragraph), but somehow things can flame-out. I’ve noticed a healthy amount of January blahs in Instagram, but maybe it’s just that the projects your Past Self wanted to do are not the projects your Present Self thinks are worth tackling.

Laura Entis wrote an interesting article about the getting back the “flame in the combustion chamber,” or turning that creative spark into something that can help you fly. She lists several components: 1) paying attention (done…see first paragraph), 2) write it down (see first paragraph), but it was her third idea that caught my attention: 3) put a stake in the ground. She interprets that to mean going public, and many of us do (see our Instagram accounts), but I think for quilters there is a further aspect. It might mean washing/drying/pressing the fabric and putting it with its pattern in a drawer or a box. It might even mean cutting out some of the basic units before even one stitch takes place, like we do when we have a Mystery Quilt we’re making; they always want us to prep with this step. But any way you do it, putting a stake in the ground can mean committing to sparking that project into life.

I also liked her Step 6: Map it Out. At the end of last year, I became immersed in a project that overwhelmed me. It didn’t help during this time, Mom was dying in a state far away, or that I got really sick in December, and January has me battling a painful sciatica (can hardly wait to see what February brings…not!), but the project felt overwhelming. I should have mapped it out, so I could envision the flow, the places it was going. She got that idea from Kelli Anderson:

When Anderson embarks on something new, whether it’s for a client or a self-directed project, she sets a final deadline, and then breaks down the project into stages. “I draw it out visually,” she says, sketching out each phase in proportion to how long it should take. Next, she maps the visual sketch onto an actual calendar, translating periods of time into numerical blocks. Even the best laid plans can go awry, however. “The schedule is just a suggestion,” Anderson says, one she regularly refines. “If you are indulgent and you spend too much time on one part you can oftentimes make it up later at another stage.” (from here)

So, here are some of my “stakes in the ground”:

My latest quilt is back from the quilter, who did a wonderful job; now I need to trim it and get it bound. The thing that bogged me down was writing the pattern, but I ended up selling a different version of this to a magazine, so come fall, I’ll let you know where and when. (The pattern for the above quilt will come a year after that publication.)

Chris’ quilt. I made a quilt for my grandson when he came to my son’s family (he was a boy) and within about 20 minutes he out-grew it. I’ve promised him one forever and decided a large format quilt would be fun to make. It has been.

I’ve even mapped it out, as Entis suggested, in a book that helps me break down all the steps. I’m so pathetic I’ve even listed <wait> while it’s at the quilter. I’ve made you a PDF of this format so you can map out your projects, too. Click on the DOWNLOAD button below to get your copy.

make-a-plan-sheets Download

Last, and okay-I-know-how-I’m-spending-my-February:

My house is nearing fifty years old. We’ve done some cosmetic updates to the kitchen, and bigger updates to the house, but it’s time to really get serious and update the kitchen. So we’re fridge-counters-cooktop-stove-vent-hardware-sink-etc. shopping. We feel pretty fortunate to be able to do this at this time, and keep wondering if we are too old for all of this. I was encouraged by all the comments left on my Help-Me-I’m-Remodeling post on Instagram. If you have any tips, let me know. I’m really leaning heavily towards an induction cooktop as I think it’s the way of the future. And double ovens? Yes? No? Who Cooks This Much? Leave me your ideas in the comments!

PS: Yes, I was able to attend a bit of Road to California, and saw my quilt, Eris, hanging there (happy dance!):

Something to Think About

Her Day is Done

November 15, 2022August 31, 2025 Elizabeth E.37 Comments

After 94 years, my mother went Home.

I heeded all your messages and got in the car that afternoon. I made it in time to see her before she lapsed into unconsciousness, then, by a quirk of timing, Dad alone was with her when she died. Thank you for writing. You all made a difference.

I promise we’ll get back to quilting, so no — this blog has not changed into something else. But I might be a bit more erratic in my posting for a minute, as I navigate Thanksgiving, the funeral services and any partly-sunny-with-patches-of-tears moments. (But you weren’t going to read over Thanksgiving, anyway, were you?)

My heart is full, and I’m filled with gratitude for a wonderful mother.

See you on the other side, Mom.

Something to Think About

It Takes Time

November 10, 2022May 29, 2026 Elizabeth E.27 Comments

It takes time to stare out the window at the welcomed rain, the summer dust washing off, leaving the leaves glistening.

It takes time for my sister Susan to call all seven of us children — the task divided up with my brother David — to tell them that at breakfast that Friday morning mother had a stroke, was rushed to the hospital where she remains in critical care.

It takes time to not sew. Or sew, then un-stitch. Wonder if this was the right set of fabrics where not just four days ago you were certain of it. You were certain of everything: your plans for Thanksgiving, the trip to Utah for your father’s 97th birthday, the relationships you had with your brothers and sisters. Which now, after Mom’s stroke, all looks very uncertain.

It takes time to make contact with all your brothers and sisters, now that you realize that taking time is what you want to do. Some welcome the contact. Others seem to think you are nuts, that Mom will recover, that they were just fine with a little distance. It’s a common refrain in families, this push-pull, in-out, close-far, and we are no exception.

At the end of the time at my friend Joan’s funeral — well, after the funeral — after the family members left who kept you on edge, after the clean-up of the meal and the sweeping of the floor, we took a little time to say our good-byes. I looked at Joan’s daughter and husband, their five daughters and realized that I’d been given a gift by taking this time to serve them. I said as much to them, then added that while I would miss Joan terribly, she was in bits and pieces in all of them: her love of literature, travel, adventure, kindness, curiosity and love for those around her. A moment of final emotion and then having taken the time, we all left.

It takes time to not plan out a Christmas quilt, especially now, when time has to be taken for talking on the phone, reading letters full of treatment details for mother’s care. Photos are texted and I don’t really recognize her, but I recognize her, the strange yin-yang of illness. Her bed is surrounded by upright sentinels: oxygen readers, heart monitors, IV drips, and other machines I can’t even imagine.

It takes quite a few whiles to realize that you don’t have it in you to write back to kind notes on the blog, to talk to people on the phone, to do the grocery shopping. I take time to watch the rain, the hummingbird at my window.

It takes time to scroll and scroll on my phone, eyes glazed over while my heart and mind are focused on a slight elderly woman in a hospital bed far away. She’s 94. When I ask my doctor friend about strokes, I can hardly talk. “But she’s 94,” he said. “It’s not unexpected.” Yes. Right. Until it is. Then an uptick and life is almost normal for a few minutes. I forget that I am keeping company with the unthinkable thought, that my mother got “caught in the door” as my kind friend said, both of us thinking of the door out of this world.

I take the time to talk briefly with Dad; a nurse comes in and he is gone off to be beside my mother, leaving me wanting more time with him.

It took time last night, when talking to my sister, to tell her the story of saying good-bye to Joan’s family. And we are like that, too, I said. All seven of us have bits and splinters of our mother: the woman who loved to read, the 1940s glamour girl, the woman who was smart but stayed home to raise her children, the woman who went back to school in her fifties to earn her college degree, the good cook, the hostess, the loving mother and grandmother, the sharp wit and sometimes sharp tongue — it’s all there in all of us.

It takes time to recognize that you need to plan for an uncertain future. It takes time to wonder if she’ll have another stroke and I take time to do frantic research on the web. It takes time to wander around the house, to talk on the phone, to make and un-make plans. One late night I ask if I should come up. Oh, there’s plenty of time, came the reply.

We always think there is.